Museum Cultures (Part-Time)

Overview

If you are contemplating a career in the museum and gallery sector and if you want to understand contemporary debates about museums and their cultural significance, then this is the course for you.

Museums have been of enormous importance in shaping empires, nations and cities, and their collections are connected to wider histories of conflict and social change. To study museums is to study the development and fierce contestation of our collective cultural imagination and memory. 

The Postgraduate Diploma in Museum Cultures (Part-Time) at Birkbeck, University of London   gives you the chance to develop a range of key skills, from critical thinking and writing to practical experience through a supervised work placement in a museum, gallery or archive. Previous work placements have been offered at the Tate, the British Museum, the Whitechapel Gallery and the Horniman Museum. Past students have helped design and run schools programmes, documented collections that were previously uncatalogued, conducted visitor research and assisted curators in producing exhibitions. As well as regular gallery and museum visits, we also offer an exciting study trip abroad every spring.

You begin with a core course that introduces interdisciplinary perspectives on the study of museums and a research skills module where you work collaboratively with your classmates. You then take two options in areas of specialist interest and either an independent research project or a work placement in a museum, gallery or archive.

The Postgraduate Diploma is ideal if you are interested in studying museum cultures at postgraduate level for personal or professional reasons, but you don't want to commit to a full MA.

Careers and Employability

Our students develop the ability to think critically and creatively, and to articulate their ideas persuasively. Intellectual rigor, visual sensitivity and informed debate are fundamental to museum studies, as well as being transferable skills relevant to a range of careers. Graduates can pursue jobs in arts management, conservation and policy; in education, marketing and publishing; in the museums and heritage sectors; and in research and academia.